Consumer reveals its ‘most unreliable’ vehicles

Ford topped Consumer NZ’s least reliable cars list, with the Escape and Focus having major faults. Photo / 123rf

By Susan Edmunds of RNZ

Ford has topped the list of Consumer NZ’s least reliable cars in its latest survey.

The survey of 5791 car owners asked people what faults they had experienced with their cars and how satisfied they were with the vehicles.

Ford Escapes and Ford Focuses had the highest number of major and serious faults reported and fewer satisfied owners when it came to ongoing maintenance and repairs.

Consumer noted that Ford discontinued the Focus last year and the Escape had also been taken out of the New Zealand market.

The survey found Fords had a lot of engine, transmission and electrical issues. Ford was approached for comment.

Report author Bryan Wall said products, including cars, were generally built to a budget and components would fail eventually.

“Cars are subject to quite a lot of stress and strain on the road, high speeds and so on, so parts are going to fail eventually. It just depends which parts fail that deems how reliable a car is.

“If it’s a major failure, say a water pump, and it’s expensive, then it’s going to be deemed a less reliable vehicle.”

The next least reliable vehicle was a Volkswagen Tiguan.

Nearly half of owners had experienced a fault with their cars during the period they had owned them. A quarter had been a major fault.

Wall said he was not surprised.

“One of the cars I’ve actually got myself is the Volkswagen Tiguan and we’ve had issues with them. I think the design of these vehicles is great – you’ll see there’s two sides to the survey.

“There’s a reliability and a satisfaction score, so you find the two are certainly interrelated, if you’ve got an unreliable vehicle, you’re generally going to be unsatisfied.

“However, there are certain vehicles where people actually really like them and they’ll keep putting money into them and repairing them. The Tiguan is one of those. It’s a really good vehicle to drive. It’s got all the bells and whistles, but it’s got this strange unreliability part to it.”

Volkswagen was also approached for comment.

Wall said the cost of repairing cars came down to parts and labour.

“I’ve been amazed at some of the prices I get quoted for parts on my European vehicles. They do have a reputation [for being expensive to repair] and I think there is evidence to back that up as well.”

He said it would be interesting to see how electric vehicles fared over time.

“It’s early days with EVs as to how reliable they are ... we’re seeing a lot of EVs that people are really, really happy with at the moment because the maintenance on these is essentially quite minimal really compared to an internal combustion engine. It’s generally software issues that have to be updated and so on to fix problems.”